Her arm tightened about him. "We will do fine!" she said eagerly. "We will mak' moch money. There is no plentier place for fur; and we will have it all! Me, I can set traps and snares as good as Michel Whitebear. Maybe I will get a silver fox, or a black one. I know the fox! In the spring we will have plenty good credit at the store. We can travel to the Settlement then, and you will not be lonesome. There are many white men. We could stay in the Settlement all summer; and I would cook meals for the freighters and the travellers and mak' more money. I am a good worker, 'Erbe't. Everybody say so!"
Mabyn partly roused himself. "That's not a bad idea," he said. "Under cover of the restaurant, it would be dead easy to run in a little whiskey over the Berry Mountain trail, and make a pot of money. Fifty cents a drink, by Gad!"
Rina drew away from him. "I will not help you do that, 'Erbe't," she said quietly.
"You'll do what I tell you to do," he said coolly.
Rina remained silent. Her breast heaved and trembled with terror at her own temerity in defying her husband—but there were both firmness and reproach in her attitude. It was more than the weak Mabyn could bear for long in silence.
"Good God!" he burst out. "Have I married a breed to tell me what I ought to do, and ought not to do? Better learn once for all, my girl, that I'm the head of this outfit, and I mean to do whatever I damned please!"
Rina sat gripping her hands together in her lap to control their trembling. Her head was bowed. "I am only a breed girl," she said. "You are my 'osban', and you can beat me, and you can kill me, but I would not cry out, or think bad of you. But you cannot mak' me help you to mak' a pig of you again. I will mak' you to have good credit, an' to be a rich and strong man, an' you can go back and spit on the poor breeds that mock you before. I will not help you trade in whiskey; whiskey mak' you poor, an' sick, an' crazy!"
Mabyn got up. "God! Women are all alike, white or brown!" he muttered indifferently. "Come on in."
But he had yielded the point. The regeneration of Herbert Mabyn had been undertaken.